


A Tisket, A Tasket

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Backstory, Childhood, Gen, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 11:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9232820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Sometimes, Marie can really ruin Skyler's day.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [biblionerd07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this.

Skyler Lambert zeroed her eyes in on the target across the yard. He had evaded her thus far, that much was true – but Skyler was going to be quicker than he was.

At ten years old, she was taller than the other girls in her third grade class, and had blonde hair that went down her back. Right now, it was pulled into one long braid, in order to keep it out of her face.

“You cannot escape,” she said in a low voice, “I have you marked… I’m going to get you. The recovery mission is almost complete!”

She imagined that she was making the announcement on some sort of nature show, or maybe one of those travel ones where people went out into the wild to go try delicacies people had never heard of. Or maybe it was one and the same – maybe she was out on a safari or something like that.

Whatever it was, she was doing it. She would not be stopped.

She was going to get this cat out of the tree.

She scaled the yard in what felt like only a few seconds (she’d have to time it later) and lifted up a foot where the branches first met at the bottom of the dogwood tree. 

Maybe she would climb too far, she thought as she pulled up her second foot to meet it. Maybe she would find herself stranded up in the tree, too. Who would come save them both?

It didn’t really matter, Skyler decided, because she wasn’t about to let anyone save her. That was what she kept telling Marie, every time her six-year-old sister would start talking about some princess crap or other.

“They all wait for somebody to save them. Who has time for that? Nobody saves anybody.”

She grabbed the branch above her and easily pulled herself up.

The big, fluffy orange cat – Mr. Whiskers, Marie had named him, which Skyler thought was pretty stupid – was sitting on the branch directly above her. He had a wide-eyed look on his face, as if he had just woken up in this particular quandary as opposed to having climbed up the tree in the first place.

“You big idiot,” Skyler grumbled. “If I fall, I’m going to be so mad at you.”

She hoped Marie didn’t see her. Her little sister was known to tattle about everything, and that was the last thing Skyler needed right now. 

She let go of one of the branches, reaching up to loop her arm under the cat’s belly. She pulled back as the cat let out a yowl. He began to scratch at her arm as she pulled him back, letting go to grab a hold of him with her other arm as well.

She would have succeeded, too, if Marie hadn’t taken that moment to yell out: “Skyler!”

And down came Skyler, Mr. Whiskers and all.

***

“You’re an idiot,” Skyler grumbled, trying unsuccessfully to punch her with her arm in a cast. 

“You’re an idiot!” Marie fired back. “You fell out of a tree.”

“I got Mr. Whiskers down.”

“He was going to get back down on his own,” Marie said, crossing her arms. “You’re just a show off.”

“Am not!”

“Girls, shut up,” Mr. Lambert grumbled as he walked into the room. “I already have a headache.”

Skyler was a little surprised that her father was here at all. He was usually busy, though she wasn’t entirely sure what he was usually busy doing.

Of course, Marie thought he was the best thing to ever cross Earth’s plain. She had been born loud and jabbering and annoying. Like having a mosquito as a younger sister.

“I don’t want to hear any more bickering. We are going back home, and I am going to bed.”

Skyler wanted to pipe up and inquire what her father did other than going to bed (that, alternated with the bar) but she figured it wouldn’t be a good time.

“Is the cat fine, at least?” she asked instead. Marie snorted.

“Big stupid cat.”

“He’s your cat too! If he’s stupid, it’s probably because of you!”

“Girls!”

***

“You think she’s ever coming back?”

Marie, by virtue of being the younger sister, had gotten stuck with the bottom bunk. Skyler liked to think of it as the only argument between the two that she had ever truly won. 

Sometimes, she worried as if she might roll off in the middle of the night; the sides seemed awfully low. 

It didn’t compel her to ask to switch, though. She liked being high up, above things, so she could reach up and touch the ceiling or hear it better when the neighbor boys were getting yelled at by their parents.

And it made it easier to ignore Marie when she asked questions like that.

This time Marie wasn’t going to be dissuaded so quickly, however. 

“I mean, maybe she’ll get tired doing whatever she’s doing and she’ll come back for us. She has to miss us, doesn’t she?”

Skyler let out a short chuckle.

“Yeah. Okay. Because she wants to come back to a bunch of bratty kids when she could do whatever she wants now. She’s never coming back, Marie. She was bored with us, and so is he!”

Skyler could hear her sister crying softly.

“Why are you always so mean, Skyler?”

Skyler didn’t know.

***

Skyler was already taller than most of the boys who lived on their street, and stronger than at least half. This did not usually garner her invitations to play.  
And the only other girls on the street were a pair of hopscotch enthusiasts and, of course, Marie.

This was the first day her cast was off, and she wasn’t about to spend it sitting on the back step playing jacks with her little sister. She was off to the park, hopefully to get into a real adventure. Something to take her away from this boring life, away from everything. 

Of course, it wasn’t as if the park was all that exciting by itself. It was just a standard, run of the mill park, rundown if anything. There had been a tire swing back when Skyler had been younger, but they had taken it down because apparently older kids – “teenagers”, some of the old women on Skyler’s street used to scoff between cigarettes – used to hang out on them and get into trouble. It had seemed unfair to blame the swing and not the actual people involved.

The park was right behind the elementary school Skyler and Marie attended – Skyler was a 3rd grader, and Marie was in 1st. 

Skyler hated that place. It was a prison, she had said more than once, and her father had laughed.

“My little Skyler,” he always called her, “She’s a wit.”

But it was true. It wasn’t as if she could leave the place when she wanted. She had to behave according to time tables and rules upon rules that didn’t even make sense half the time.

She wouldn’t have to deal with that until tomorrow, however. Now, it was still a glorious Sunday. The day of rest, people called it. 

A day of peace.

She needed to leave early; otherwise, Marie would try to tag along and ruin the whole thing.

She left as soon as her father was gone for the morning; Marie was still sleeping soundly. She couldn’t help but feel a little bad, but only a little.

***

Skyler stood at the top of the wooden bridge that led up to the slide, with her hands on her hips. She ran up and slid down, jumping into the wood chips and rolling around.

She quickly grew bored. There had to be something more out there. 

She made her way behind the playground and into the woods. She could remember one day when they hadn’t let them go out to recess because, apparently, a dog had been on the loose. How Skyler had wished she had been allowed out on that day – maybe it had been a wild dog, maybe some kind of coyote. Maybe it had been a magic dog. 

But no, she had been closed off from it, just like she was closed off from any adventure, any escape.

Well, not today. Today, she wasn’t going to let anything hold her back; she had decided.

At least there didn’t seem to be anybody who would interrupt this, who would tell her that she’d “tell her mother” (God, Skyler hated that, “good luck finding her”, she always wanted to say) or that she needed to get in line. Get in line for what? There never seemed to be any real point to most of what adults said.

They never seemed to tell the truth, anyway. 

Skyler started down the well-trod path into the woods. She’d come here, at least part of the way, when she had gone to summer camp the previous year, but there seemed to be more left to explore that they hadn’t gotten to yet.

She didn’t need stupid Marie. She was doing so much better since she’d left her at home. All she ever did was get in the way.

Maybe Skyler would never go home. She started to make her way across the trail, then switched directions to begin to scale up a small hill covered in rocks. She could slip her sneakers against the rocks to brace herself, could grab higher ones to pull herself up.

She wondered how high up it went – maybe up to the sky. Maybe up to the roof of the world; she’d heard that on TV once but wasn’t sure what it was, exactly. It sounded like the place to be.

Skyler reached up and dug her nails into the dirt underneath another rock, trying to hoist herself up again. Her legs swung for a second, and she could feel her grip slipping.

“Fuck!” she hissed under her breath, something freeing about the word. It was a word with power; otherwise, people wouldn’t be so obsessed with not letting her say it. It was to be saved for special occasions. 

Like falling to your doom.

***

Skyler didn’t recognize where she was when she awoke. It was dirty, that much was obvious, and she could hear plenty of birds annoyingly chirping their happy song.  
But everything ached. Maybe nothing was broken, this time, but she wasn’t going to be getting up any time soon, either.  
What had she done this time?  
Looking around, Skyler realized she seemed to have fallen on to some kind of tree root. It was hard and unyielding beneath her, and efforts to push against and climb off of it were quickly coming to no avail.  
She might have really done it this time.   
Skyler tried to stand up again, but found herself flopping down.  
She was never going to get home.  
And she’d be so damn nasty to Marie, leaving her behind, too. She was the worst big sister in the whole world.

***

When she told the story later, Skyler had said she’d been there for hours. Marie would always disagree, laughing and looking at her sister with a look that said “We both know what really happened.”

“You were out there maybe an hour,” Marie had reminded her once. “But… I get it. It’s the story.” She almost said it with a capital S, and it sounded to Skyler like maybe she did understand, somehow. 

All Skyler could remember was opening her eyes and seeing her little sister standing there in front of her. She’d saved her.

Skyler had vowed never to take her sister for granted again, and she’d spent most of her life living by that pledge.

At least, she had tried. Sometimes, her sister could still be really annoying. Sometimes Skyler still wanted to kick up dust, climb a mountain, and run away.

But these days, Skyler tried not to forge off too far on her own, anymore. At least not without looking back.


End file.
